EAST LANSING, Mich. — On Saturday afternoon following Michigan State's blowout loss at Rutgers, it was suggested to Tom Izzo the Scarlet Knights exhibited a lot of the traits normally seen by a Spartans team.
Tough. Relentless. Efficient.
Rutgers was all of them and Izzo scoffed at the notion Michigan State was not, quickly pointing out that his team had won 17 games at that point and was still in the thick of the Big Ten race.
It was a fair rebuttal. After all, the Spartans started slowly that day, but were essentially overwhelmed by a hot-shooting team, desperate for a big win to bolster its NCAA Tournament resume in front of a home crowd ready to blow the roof off the building.
Fast forward a couple of days to Tuesday night at the Breslin Center, following a 70-62 loss to Wisconsin. This time, Izzo wasn't waiting to be asked, he was questioning his team's toughness and his ability to get them to play tougher.
"That that was a poor coaching job and the team wasn't ready to play," Izzo said. "I thought (Wisconsin) played hard as hell in the first half. I thought we were very, very soft and ... stood around."
For most of the first 20 minutes, that as true. While Wisconsin hardly burned the nets, Michigan State was doing almost nothing offensively, unable to produce a single point in transition over the first 20 minutes as its half-court offense looked stuck in the mud.
It was, as Izzo pointed out, a team that seemed to be in neutral, just going through motions while the Badgers were expending most of the energy.
"We got to figure out how we're going to get a little tougher," Izzo said. "And I haven't had many teams that I had to worry about that with, but I've got to worry about that with this team because you saw it, you watched it. I thought every loose ball they got. I thought every loose ball at Rutgers, they got.
"Is it fixable? Yeah, it's fixable. I mean, it's always fixable, but we got to do a much, much, much better job, so we'll go to work on it, I promise you that."
There seems little doubt about what sort of work will take place over the next few days as Michigan State (17-6, 8-4 Big Ten) prepares to host Indiana on Saturday. But what comes of that work is a fair question.
For the better part of the last two months, Michigan State issues — namely turnovers and defensive rebounding — all wrapped up in a ball of inconsistency.
The Spartans can look outstanding one game — see the victory at Wisconsin or the win at home over Michigan — but quickly fall back into a negative rut for games at a time. And up until Tuesday, it's been easy to explain away because the Spartans were still winning games.
They were not doing it impressively on multiple occasions, but they were getting wins, nonetheless.
But now, for the first time this season, there is a losing streak. And, for the first time, a rebound doesn't seem certain. Can it come? Sure. After all, this is, as Izzo has pointed out, a team that has 17 wins and it's not like they've been bad every game.
However, as the Spartans were busy missing 16 of their first 20 shots on Tuesday, there was plenty of concern about an offense that had no life, no spark, no one to turn to when Michigan State needed a lift.
"It was stagnant," senior Gabe Brown said. "Guys weren't moving, we were rushing shots. There's a lot of things that went on, but we didn't do the things that we were supposed to do on offense. We didn't swing the ball and I take blame for that too, because I am a captain. I've got to get guys going a certain way."
When the offense did finally start to come to life in the second half, it was other parts of the game that began to falter — the parts that have been happening all season.
With the Wisconsin lead cut to 45-44 with just more than nine minutes to play and the Breslin Center crowd starting to buzz, the Spartans got two straight defensive stops, only to lose the rebound out of bounds. The first time, Wisconsin's Johnny Davis hit a jumper on the Badgers' second chance, and on the second, he buried a 3-pointer, pushing the lead to 50-45.
"If we would have played harder, got those rebounds at the end," Izzo lamented. "We have one rebound that we get and it's knocked out of bounds and they hit a three. Then the next one we have the ball that goes on the floor, they get that one, too. You just can't do that against good teams."
Even then, the Spartans had chances. They cut it to 50-47 on a Malik Hall jumper and after getting stops on Wisconsin's next two trips, Michigan State committed back-to-back turnovers. The first was on Hall who lost the ball going down the lane and the second was in transition when Tyson Walker threw it away.
Two possessions later, Brad Davison hit a triple and the game was essentially over.
"We had two critical turnovers when we didn't get a shot," Izzo said. "We got what we deserved. You get credit for doing a good job sometimes, I should get blamed for doing a bad job. That to me was not a very well-coached team tonight, so I'm taking full responsibility."
Whether a turnaround is coming remains to be seen. The schedule is tough, to be sure. But opportunity exists, as well, with games left against most of the other contenders — Purdue, Illinois and Ohio State.
Maybe the offense still struggles. Perhaps the turnovers stay the same. But one thing seems clear, the effort likely will not be missing again.
"We've got to finish and we've got to do things in that manner," Brown said. "Bringing energy is something we all have to bring to the table. Every single player has to bring energy in order for us to go forward. That's my job as a captain. I've got to bring energy, I've got to bring more and more energy, and guys start following along."
